Conspicuous consumption

Marble House, Newport, R.I., built in 1888-92.

Marble House, Newport, R.I., built in 1888-92.

''One hundred years after the declaration that all men are created equal, there began to gather in Newport a colony of the rich, determined to show that some Americans were conspicuously more equal than others.” 

 

--- The late Alistair Cooke, British-born journalist, television personality and broadcaster